MINISTRY
Enjoy The Quiet: Live At Wacken 2012
UDR Music (2013)
Rating: 7.5/10
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Hot on the trail of Ministry’s final studio album, From Beer To Eternity (2013), comes Enjoy The Quiet. This three-disc set includes Ministry’s 2012 set at the Wacken Open Air Festival as well as a separate disc containing their set at the festival from 2006 (their retirement tour). Rounding it all out is a DVD that includes both shows as well.
Since the 2012 show is the centrepiece, let’s talk about it first. Make no mistake, 2012 was a great year for Ministry. The band sound amazing and they are like maniacs on stage.
The show opens with the scathing, but uncannily truthful, ‘Ghouldiggers’. The law of the land is laid when it’s pointed out that Al Jourgensen is worth more dead than alive, and the band rip into ‘No W’ from there. While this wouldn’t have been my first choice to have this early in the set, the band are so intense that they force me to like it. They move about the laser lit stage like banshees and the massive crowd can’t get enough. Even just listening to the audio disc, you would get this sense of urgency and rebirth that makes you feel like Ministry might rule again.
‘LiesLiesLies’ and ‘99 Percenters’ come back to back in a tour de force that lays waste to pretty much everything, transcending it’s political snarkiness and becoming more of a commentary on today’s existence in the free world. ‘Relapse’ is another excellent moment here but, of course, the chaotic flagship song ‘Just One Fix’ takes the cake, sounding more relevant now than it did when it was first written and sending the tiring crowd back into a frenzy.
The show from 2006 is quite a bit different from the 2012 show, proving how different Ministry had become prior to “retirement”. The band look tired on stage and the overall sound is much more muddled in a punk metal kind of way. Everything from the 2012 show is sleek and well thought out and, in contrast, this show’s goal seems to be to pummel the audience with sound. The stage is chaotic and the set is dominated by the punk pit overtones that dominated the band’s new millennium work. Everything here just sounds crazier and angrier, which is a good thing on songs like the devastating ‘Fear Is Big Business’, which opens the show. ‘The Great Satan’ is like a wall of sound with disruptive soloing and fast-paced drumming that beats the listener down. ‘Just One Fix’, ‘LiesLiesLies’, ‘Rio Grande Blood’, and a few more appear here as well but with a noticeably more metal bent. It’s obvious that Jourgensen had two very different ideas in mind when performing these shows. ‘Psalm 69’ closes the show and, although the sound is a bit hollow, it still shakes out as one of the band’s most powerful offerings.
The DVD is just as enjoyable as the audio here, maybe even more enjoyable when it comes to the 2006 show. While I’ve described it a bit when talking about the audio, I will add that the 2012 show is huge. The band have big screen stuff going all the time and the light work is top notch as well as the band sounding way better than the 2006 version of Ministry. The 2006 show is more low key, without all the flash or grandeur that makes them seem like metal gods in the latter show. The lights are dim and there are a ton of strobes. The whole look is much angrier, fitting well with the idea that this would be the band’s painful, unwanted goodbye. It’s just a darker edge overall, which will certainly appeal more to fans of the band’s new millennium work than their older material.
Overall, this set is well worth your time. The 2006 show is a bonus and it kinda feels like that. The 2012 show is the centrepiece and when you couple that with From Beer To Eternity, it truly makes you wish Ministry would stick around awhile longer.
Mark Fisher
